"machineries" poems
“Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.”
– Isaac Bashevis Singer
1.
There are wars, and rumors of wars—
machineries, machinations
of singular dark days,
and clouds that hang
like props above our city.
We shut the windows,
refuse to watch their play.
Hungrily, we take refuge
between each other’s legs.
How comforting it is
to love without armies,
without tanks,
without generals of reasoned love.
---
2.
There are wars, and rumors of wars—
machineries, machinations
of singular dark days.
From the narrow street, they see us
wrestling with an angel—
the tug of limbs, the tangle of hair.
You whisper low,
your seditious talk of love—
as my callused hands get caught
in your low moaning—
while I hold you down
to the bed,
my captive.
The occupation has begun—
your occupied body,
my country of ardent prayers.
---
2.
There are wars—
machineries, machinations
of singular dark days.
The soldiers are leaving for the front.
Not us.
We stay behind,
to wage our war
of tenderness.
They leave this morning.
Applaud their sad theater—
the warships, the planes.
Soon,
letters will arrive
without them.
A few men will return—
gaunt, less than before—
with more silence,
less dancing.
And when they do,
our war will have ended
under a flag
of white bed sheets.
Only a little blood.
Victorious,
we’ll write love letters
on each other’s bodies.
Apr 25, 2025
Apr 25, 2025 at 3:20 PM UTC
It was spring
—there was a boy,
And with him was his father.
They sat along in rooms
That smelled of kerosene
And buzzed with machineries,
Their hands smudged black
With grime and plaster.
It was spring
—and his head was a golden halo.
How he was created,
I suppose we’ll never know.
So often the boy would ask,
“Father, father, what am I?”
(For if the father was trapped in his cage
With only a forge as his company,
Then what else could this little boy be?)
It was spring
—and the boy grew tall and proud.
Hair like fire and eyes like quicksand,
“My son, you will reach heights no man
Has ever reached before.”
It was spring
—and the father’s smile grew tired and weary
“I will not be caged,” and yet he was, he was.
Thus he took feathers from god-knows-where
And built wings from wax and cinders.
It was spring
—and my son, do not fly too close to the sun;
See there?
That is freedom—just do not fly too close to the sun.
And the boy nodded,
Little long nosed liar that he is.
It was spring,
—they say, when Icarus fell.
And here was freedom:
Wind sharp like glass
And the sun too warm,
The world minimal between his fingertips.
He burned bright, burned fast, died quickly.
(And they say the waves were gentle,
As clockwork spilled.)
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 10:25 PM UTC
Venne, Videt, Delent
They came, They saw, They destroy
They came, after days and nights of travel from different places
With them are vicious machineries, roaring to harvest the land
Nourished by the earth itself
They saw, with hungering and ambitious eyes
Over the fortune they can make out of the natural wealth
The land restlessly developed for years
They Destroy, with their machines
They senselessly cut down timber, dig out ore and hunt down animals
For no other reason other than their greedy and materialistic desires
Then they leave, going to another land and repeat the evil cycle; leaving the
former ruined and devastated
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 12:20 PM UTC
beneath her feet
her most daring
feet
that traversed
the murky waters
of dawn, past mountainsides
of prayers, stallions the blackest mare
love combined, daresay silence annuls
the noise of heart and the shadow
casts its darkest immaterial stone
beneath her feet
her most daring
feet
the dead continue
to bury the living
and the living excites
the demanded hue of another blue
to hold close into the sky
whose also darling feet dangle
much like water’s fervent collapse
mantling the rivers, miles you have
walked without images of I
beneath her feet
her most beautiful feet
we go wind by wind in excess
of days
in the night’s blackest dress soiled
by light is inmost dance instep,
curated from machineries
beneath her feet
your feet I adore
which bony prominences hurdle
me weak, ruined,
where I lay
is always the cradle of Earth
your feet and I beneath
them, emerging from the possible life
of leaves in birdflight,
beneath your feet
your cold feet, unrelenting
on the unkind tomb of my body
your swift drop of feet, their
superfluous coming-and-going
love landing on my body – trampled, weighed down
beneath your feet,
your most darling feet.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 4:25 AM UTC
it is not that we are far away
but there is this stilled candor that
there are spaces, gaps, turns and swerves that we cannot close.
as in a star in its throne will remain
to be lit in diadem of white, cannot be touched or you in your silence
with the drone of such tired machine:
moon's all round and all i saw, yet not
always the visible, encircled in flesh and
without so much question, the mind's a
quicksilver marauding to motion all
things except your own parasols bending
to such airlessness, and to make tractable, this unstable mirage
of you, fulminating in such bright auroras persisting within the day when you
arrive not with hands but with chains,
machineries and not bones, no such lissomeness of skin love-hewn but walls,
not the earthen night but only brindled silence like the world whispering ssmething
close to the ear not love but pain.
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 9:23 AM UTC
"Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions."
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
*
There are wars and rumors of wars.
machineries and machination of
singular dark days
and singular dark clouds that hang
like props above our city.
We shut the window, we avoid their play.
Hungrily we take refuge between
each others' legs.
How comforting this is to us,
to love without armies or tanks
or generals of reasoned love.
*
From the narrow street, they can see us
wrestling with an angel -
the tugging of limbs and hair-
You speak low so they can’t hear
your seditious talk of love,
where my callused hands get tangled
in your low moaning - while I hold you down
to the bed,
my captive.
The occupation has begun —
your occupied body
my undiminished country of so many
ardent prayers.
*
The soldiers are all leaving for the front.
Not us, we will stay
and wage our war
of tenderness.
They are all leaving this morning.
Give them your applause for their sad
theater, and all their war ships
and planes.
Soon
they will write letters home
which will arrive without them.
A few men will return,
return gaunt; much less
than before
with more sadness and less
dancing.
And when they do
our war
will have ended
with a flag of white
bed sheets,
only a little blood,
Victorious,
writing love letters on each others' bodies.
Oct 16, 2017
Oct 16, 2017 at 11:50 AM UTC
we belong to the starving places, the broken places,
the screaming, shattered, hallucinated alleys
of blood and smoke and demons of shuddering righteousness.
floating lovers running high and poison-drunk
into doorways and neonic windows crying out
for absinthe and holy, holy benzedrine
in glazed teacups of library cafés.
demonic siren-songs,
shrieking car alarms in afternoon machineries,
when all the righteous are sleeping
and the chosen come out to scream
in front of shutters closed down to the ******
vibrations from the drilling drilling drilling
into the pavements of greying rain-tears and rainbowed gasoline
spilled carelessly from engines
releasing rotten and evil from the deepness of the earth.
those righteous-shutters blow half open
in the madness of waxing moon-winds.
beautiful, beautiful darkness,
beautiful, beautiful damnation,
golden deception,
golden lucifer,
golden hell,
golden lights straying off pathways of dark-deep forests,
golden souls in eager rivers of underworlds,
golden addiction,
golden smiles of torture,
golden wheels of death and birth
and dying, dying, dying for the darkness,
dying with blood running purple
into the indigo road- drains of night,
reflecting golden constellations and golden lamp-posts
and the golden windows of empire state and the l-train.
scream, scream, scream into your indigo death.
fearful, ground-sleeping, six feet forgotten,
fires below, regret above, redemption and tears from the righteous
with their closed windows far above the bodies now.
those starving places belong to us.
the dumpster-fainted concussions,
the vomited acids of last night’s drunken affairs in amber side-streets,
the hollow-eyed babies born out of terror and war
and atomic demises of love and perforated money,
those flawlessly created youths with their drugged immortality
shining broken-skinned from out of their eyes and mouths
those nothing-brained men of poetry and heavenly visions,
those meilleurs esprits,
those wanton dreamers of scotch and rosé
and pure ethanol gulped from glassware,
burning throats and minds and talent
and running genius into drains
with the purple blood of the dying.
the starving places belong to the starving,
and the starving belong to their indigo deaths.
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 5:57 PM UTC
Thought first begins in
mouth
Tzara
a Sun with a slow metabolism
excreting sterile doves
or roses in machineries of crimson
I feel the same inflammation
when thought first starts in the mouth
and ends a derailed train: penetration
in an alley of locomotives
this titular token of the grave sorrow of the World
sinking in your sleep a dagger
or
simply a
promise
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 3:22 AM UTC
He looked out on landscape of glittering monoliths Black and Shining Brilliant
Esoteric machineries of the Gods astraddle
Glancing up into the eyes of a stranger
The words fail at a universal moment of recognition
Facing the one way mirror
At the foot of the behemoth
CLANG! CLANG! Rang the bashing bright struts
Gilded bodies in words and actions
Circuits and wiring showing up from underneath
The thin layer of sheet metal
That barely contains the whole lot
As bits jangle and disclose inner contents
But he is only left to wonder
In the eyes of another
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 8:20 PM UTC
i.
this is such graver in silence when all of
the sound has conspired in the multitudes:
hands like machineries
and the groaning of the bones, when such desires
are but thirsts intimately quenched
ii.
all is but silent as brookwater:
the image in the surface is surfeit
amongst the froth of passing images.
iii.
what strangeness shall we inherit
when your face is but melded into
the many? when your name is but a passing
utterance with its immense battlement?
when your dance is but offbeat and my song,
clenched?
iv.
you are silent. and I began to speak you.
which days pass on in the flutter of your eyelids
whose nights fractured by distant shrieks
and of no delight,
what deeply-plunging moon scathes itself
with this riveting quietude,
v.
I am all but answers and you are enigmas.
my voice is young.
let my mouth be ripe.
let my teeth gleam with light,
let my all be tender with your name
that the feel of you under me,
and I over you,
like bridges stoic, steel with stillness,
will never utter a word
and only the loudest of quietness
the world will ever hear.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 12:56 AM UTC
What it must be like to be a man,
So stable and logical
A mind able to wrap it's meanderings
around machineries.
To be calm and unmovable
in the midst of a changing day.
Reading a newspaper,
Flip, flip
The page turns with a slow grain,
a fiber only to be found
Within the flesh, the blood, the breath of a man.
A good man, kind, with a good ear,
Quiet, with just enough chatter to awaken
Your spirit, your laughter, your curiosity.
A man who holds the answer simply because
It is the man's answer.
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 10:22 AM UTC
cars, no hearts, no souls, no warmth
machineries from metal were consist.
old factories and smoke.
big cities and high-rise buildings. fake smiles, fake faces, cold nights. lonelliness and empiness.
no speach, no words.
around just masks.
just masks around me.
Nov 20, 2019
Nov 20, 2019 at 12:45 PM UTC